Would surviving cruisers have kept destroyers small?

If cruisers had remained common, would modern destroyers still have become 10,000-ton ships?

They might be closer to 8,000 to 10,000 tons, but modern weapons and global roles would still make them large.

A valuable ship can still be risked when the reward is important enough. If Germany had invaded Britain, the Royal Navy would have accepted battleship losses and even beaching damaged ships as improvised fortifications because losing the country and its naval bases was the greater danger. Modern destroyers face the same calculation: their value raises the threshold for committing them but does not make them unusable. In this counterfactual, cruisers might now occupy the 15,000-ton range while destroyers remained closer to 8,000 to 10,000 tons. Cruisers would supply some top cover, but their limited numbers could not absorb every screening and general-purpose mission. Missile magazines, large radars, helicopters, endurance, and global operations would still demand substantial destroyer hulls. Preserving the cruiser category would therefore moderate destroyer growth rather than returning the type to early Cold War dimensions.